


no mention of a slanted kitchen

by alovelessgame



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Domestic, First Time, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, Slow Build, that farmer!sid au that absolutely nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 09:21:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20812766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alovelessgame/pseuds/alovelessgame
Summary: You text like a five year old, Sid finally writes.u txt like dedushka, Malkin replies, followed by the old man emoji.“That’s fair,” Sid says out loud.(or: Sid runs his family's farm, Geno still plays hockey, and there is enough pining to kill a cow)





	no mention of a slanted kitchen

**Author's Note:**

> i first got the idea for this fic back in 2017 and it never let me go, so here we are
> 
> title from "greener stretch" by torres

There are far more farmers than skids or Christians in their province and, for that, Sid is grateful. Too many skids and suddenly your county becomes the face of the meth epidemic and you can’t ever find some decongestant when you’ve got a fucking cold; too many Christians and everyone starts competing over who baptized the most people in the least polluted river.

Sid rarely goes into the city except on days like today, when he threw a threshing cylinder out in the middle of a field (the farthest from where his truck was parked, naturally) and the local tractor supply doesn’t have another one. He briefly considers telling Taylor to do it, but the last time she went into town she came back with two boyfriends and Sid just doesn’t have the patience to threaten _before_ punching someone anymore.

Halifax isn’t a big-time metropolis like some of the other places Sid’s visited, but today the streets are so jam-packed with people it’s hard to blink for fear of hitting someone. The majority of the hubbub is centered around the old rink and Sid lets himself stare for a moment before turning his truck in the opposite direction. Whatever’s going on must have something to do with hockey, and Sid chose to give that dream up years ago.

Thankfully, Donny at the co-op has the part Sid needs in exchange for an old rusted furrower that’s been collecting dust in the barn. They’re giving the cylinder the old heave-ho into the back of Sid’s flatbed when the bell above the garage door rings and a veritable wall of sound approaches. It’s a kid, barely older than Taylor, with some truly horrendous peach fuzz and a slight lisp. He’s being followed by a group of people and some cameras and Sid shoves Donny towards the approaching lights, cinching the cylinder down as fast as he can.

“Donny,” the kid yells. “You still work here?”

“Yep,” Donny says, obviously sweating through his flannel. The high-powered lights reflect off the beads on his bald head. “I thought you’d gone off to do big things, Nate.”

“Oh, I did,” the kid says, grinning. He lifts up a cap which reads _Stanley Cup Champions_. The group around him titters and Sid pulls his own black cap down, trying to disappear into the rusted fenders of his truck. “Back to back champs, can you believe it? And to think, this is where I had my first summer job!”

“Amazing, amazing,” Donny mutters as the cameras swing back towards him. He straightens his suspenders and his smile looks more like a grimace. “You’ve come a long way, kid.”

Sid makes a break for the driver’s door while everyone is preoccupied. He may have given the game up over a decade ago, but even he knows the face of Nova Scotia’s beloved native son. Hell, once upon a time, that’d been him. He closes the door without drawing too much attention, but makes the fatal mistake of trying to catch one more glimpse.

Everyone else is staring at Nate, but one man is looking directly at him.

He’s lanky, with a face like one of the bloodhound puppies Mrs. Roberts keeps trying to force Sid to take. He’s obviously part of this media circus but he’s trying to hold himself apart, like he isn’t comfortable around all the lights. He’s just standing there, but Sid has a sudden sense memory of the way this man skates and handles the puck; like the ice and stick were extensions of his own body.

God only knows Sid’s jerked off to enough of his highlight reels.

The man blinks, slow as molasses. “Sidney Crosby?” he asks, accent thickening the words.

Everyone turns to stare as one, the cameras shifting from poor perspiring Donny to Sid.

“You must have the wrong person,” Sid says and guns it out of the parking lot.

*

Sid goes back home, fixes the thresher, and tries to forget about the whole thing. It helps that life on a farm never pauses just because you’re having an existential crisis about meeting the man you were destined to play hockey with who also helped you realize you were as gay as a goddamn rainbow. The horses still need new shoes, the fucking bull still crashes through every fence you try putting between him and the neighbor’s heifers, and you still have to sit out on the porch at night with a rifle to scare off the coyotes who come wandering up because your dog went into heat.

So, Sid’s sitting at his father’s desk, trying to decide what crops could make it in the far eastern field where the irrigation doesn’t quite reach or whether to leave it fallow for a season, when the doorbell rings. Taylor’s out in the goat pen trying to milk Old Billie Jean despite the doe’s vocal protests and propensity towards kicking. It’s a thankless, ear-splitting job but Sid doesn’t even know how many times the money from Taylor’s soap stall at the weekly farmer’s market has saved their asses.

The doorbell rings again, followed by a rapid thudding that shakes the screen door.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Sid yells as he jogs down the stairs into the foyer. “Listen, Mr. Roberts, if Vindicator tried riding another one of your heifers –”

Evgeni Malkin is standing on his front porch. Sid’s watch dog Sam is at his feet, on her back and gazing up adoringly at him. Malkin looks at Sam, looks at Sid, and smiles. “You named dog Vindicator?”

“No, that’s Sam,” Sid says, dumbly. “Vindicator is our bull.”

“Ah,” Malkin nods, like that makes much more sense. Probably about as much sense as him standing on Sidney Crosby’s porch in the middle of nowhere on a Tuesday evening.

“Not to be rude,” Sid says, “but why are you here?”

Malkin shrugs, like he turns up on stranger’s doorsteps all the time. “Knew I saw you in town, but you lied. Wondered why.”

“You drove three hours just because I _lied_?”

Malkin shrugs again. It seems to be his go-to method of communication.

The back screen door slams. “Sidney,” Taylor yells from the kitchen, “who do we know who owns a Porsche?”

“Absolutely no one,” Sid yells back, staring at the little white car in the drive that probably costs more than his entire farm and inheritance combined. It’s the car of someone who doesn’t have to worry about having his home repossessed just because the spring rains didn’t come as planned or because the price of diesel went up. “Someone just got lost.”

“Wait –” Malkin says.

“Listen,” Sid interrupts him, “I don’t know why you’re really here. You wanna know why I lied? Because I didn’t really feel like standing around in front of a camera and pretending like I knew you just because we played the same sport, or defending to total strangers_ why _I quit. I just wanna be left alone, okay?”

Malkin winces, like Sid’s words have physically struck him. “I’m sorry. I was curious. About you, I mean.” He waves a hand towards Sid, encompassing the too-long curls and the worn tshirt and the shit-covered boots. “I see you in store and think _I know him_. Would’ve been my teammate, yes?”

“Yeah,” Sid says. Malkin’s words take the steam right out of him and he scuffs his boot along the wooden boards. “We would’ve been…somethin’.”

Malkin nods, like this was all he came for. A confirmation from the kid they kept calling the next Great One that they could’ve played together, that they could’ve been great together. Sid may not play anymore but he’s not too modest to realize that together they would’ve lit the NHL up. “Okay,” Malkin finally mumbles and starts to back away towards the steps. “I’ll go?” He phrases it like a question.

Sid sighs. “Do you even know how to get back to your hotel?”

“Sure,” Malkin says, pointing down the road.

“Wrong direction.”

“Oh,” Malkin lets his hand fall and Sid watches in fascination as the resulting blush turns his cheeks ruddy. “So dark already.”

“Welcome to the country,” Sid says. “You hungry?”

*

Taylor takes to having a bonafide NHL superstar as a surprise supper guest pretty well. Sid leaves Malkin to her sweet mercy and ten step _Crosby’s Organic Goat Milk Soap_ entrepreneurial plan to do the evening chores. He ends up spending nearly forty-five minutes chasing after their rooster because – even completely blind from the surrounding darkness – the mad bastard refuses to exhibit the survival instincts that God gave a lemming.

Supper is a pork roast with smashed potatoes which Malkin takes two helpings of and then, with Taylor’s encouragement, a third. “I don’t remember _you _being able to eat this much, Sid,” she says, watching the whole scene unfold with undisguised fascination.

Malkin sticks his tongue out at her, chewed up potato and cheddar cheese still clinging to it, and then nearly chokes with laughter when Taylor howls and throws her used napkin at his head.

“Serves you right,” Sid says and gives Malkin a slap on the back hard enough to make his eyes water.

Malkin insists on helping clean up after supper, so Taylor goes to check on the barn while Sid washes the dishes and Malkin dries. It’s nice, companionable. They move in a rhythm that’s as easy as breathing and Sid allows himself one second to wonder if this is what their hockey would’ve felt like. The thought has a bitter tinge to it.

“It’s getting pretty late,” Sid finally says to break the silence. “You okay to drive for three hours?”

“Sure,” Malkin says, though he seems to be paying a bit more attention to buffing out water stains on the silverware than strictly necessary. “I’m good.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Sid says, and he just can’t help himself. “You wanna spend the night?”

Something flickers across Malkin’s face, too quick for Sid to identify. He drops the last spoon into the silverware drawer and starts drying the plates. “Not too much?”

“Of course not,” Sid says, even though his mind is screaming _abort abort abort. _“You can take my room.”

Malkin baulks at the offer. “I can take sofa.”

“Fuck no,” Sid says, letting the water out of the sink. “I’m not letting my broken-down couch cripple a Stanley Cup champion, thank you.” He glances down at Malkin’s suit. It looks like something he would wear for a game day and Sid let’s himself imagine Malkin wore it in an effort to impress him. The fantasy is immediately shattered by Sid’s realization that _he_ probably looks like he got into a fight with a pig and lost. “I’ll get you something to wear, too.”

He waves off Malkin’s protests and goes upstairs to change his sheets and pillowcase. He cracks open the window, removes the dildo and lube from his bedside table and throws them under some clothes in the hamper. Malkin walks in just as he’s laying out his longest pair of pajama bottoms, and he seems to fill up Sid’s boyhood room; although long gone are the hockey posters and Bantam league trophies, thrown away or stuffed into the attic. The room is nearly spartan, with only a pair of family pictures on the wall and a pile of work boots to show that anyone still lives here, but Sid still feels like Malkin will _know _something about him from this room.

Sid grabs his sweats and tries to edge past Malkin and to the door. “Well…goodnight.”

“So early?” Malkin exclaims, sounding disappointed. The alarm clock on the nightstand flashes 9:54.

“Days start early around here,” Sid says. “You’ll see what I mean.”

*

The rooster starts crowing at 4:00. It’s not even light out yet, but the asshole still feels the need to herald a new day and Sid listens to the hens grumble and cluck at him in discontent. To say that Sid got any sleep would be generous and the long stretch of day ahead of him doesn’t seem to want to wait. He hauls his ass up, throws on yesterday’s clothes, and grabs some coffee on his way out to check the fields.

He gets back to the house a couple of hours later and finds Taylor yawning at the kitchen table. He’s gotten into the unfortunate habit of letting her sleep in, mostly because their father blatantly refused to, and it’s become a hard habit to break. “Malkin still sleeping?” he asks as he refills his thermos.

“He’s gone,” she says, cutting off mid-yawn in surprise. “You didn’t see him?”

Sid walks to the front door and sees the white Porsche’s glaring absence in the drive. There’s a small piece of paper tucked under the telephone on the sideboard.

_Sid, _it’s spider-scrawled message reads, _thank you for everything. Please give to Taylor, tell her to consider it principle investment. Yours, Geno _

Underneath it is a check for $50,000.

“Holy fucking shit,” Taylor whispers, and Sid couldn’t agree more.

*

“I told him my plan because I wanted to see if a bank would think it was a good idea, not because I wanted _money_!” Taylor explains and so by unanimous agreement they put the check in the gun safe. If Sid was a better man he would probably tear it up and be done with it altogether, but he has to admit that there’s a certain level of comfort that comes along with having that much money squirrelled away. It’s the same feeling he gets when the mortgage is paid up for the month, or when the birthing season is over and they haven’t lost a single animal.

It’ll probably be voided before they ever decided to use it, but Sid holds onto it nonetheless.

Spring finally hits and it’s a mad scramble to get as much seed into the ground as they can, all while rotating mama and baby pairs in and out of the birthing barn and trying to keep their necks above water. Donny finally comes for the old plow and is still kinda miffed about Sid’s abandonment at the shop until Sid gives him a loaf of homemade banana bread for his trouble. The goats discover new and even more inventive ways of getting out of milking, including climbing into some of the nearby trees every time Taylor approaches them with a milk bucket.

Vindicator breaks through two more fences before Sid finally talks Mr. Roberts into letting him into his pasture, under the condition that he gets to keep half the resulting calves. Vindicator, in particular, seems pleased with this new arrangement. The rooster refusing to go into the coop has turned into a damn near nightly occurrence, so Sid sets aside an hour each night to chasing around the squawking idiot while threatening to leave him for the coyotes even though he never quite has the heart to.

It’s been two months since Malkin’s visit when the call comes. “Is it Britany?” Taylor shouts down the stairs as Sid lifts the handset and tucks it next to his ear. “Tell her I’m going to be late.”

“Why would Britany call the house phone? Just text her,” Sid shouts back. To the caller he says, “Yeah?”

There’s a long pause. “Bad time?”

“Excuse me?” Sid asks.

The connection crackles, like someone has just sighed into the mouthpiece. “I ask if it bad time for call. And why you not cash check? Taylor give up business plan so easily?”

Sid nervously smooths his hair down and ends up pulling out a leaf. The goats had not been very cooperative today. “No, she’s still going at it. I think she’s on step six. She even set up her own etsy shop.”

More crackling, more sighing Sid guesses. “Accountant always yelling at me _invest more, Geno _so I do, and you don’t want it.”

Sid frowns. He hates being thought of as ungrateful. “We just didn’t feel comfortable taking your money, Malkin. I make it a point not to take pity money.”

Malkin gets quiet. The only way Sid can tell the line is still connected is the background noise of wherever Malkin is; cars and people chatting in a different tongue. “You think I _pity_ you?” Malkin finally says, so low that Sid has to press the receiver tighter to his ear to hear him.

“You tracked me down and then left $50,000 without saying a single word about it,” Sid says. “What did you expect me to think? Other than that you were being _charitable_?” After Taylor had claimed she didn’t ask for that _principle investment, _the thought had been slowly eating away at Sid. He wants a lot of things from Malkin, but least of all his pity.

“I hope,” Malkin says slowly, like he’s speaking to a child, “that you think I feel Taylor has good plan. Good set up, good follow through. I hope you think I want to support that.”

“But why $50,000?”

Malkin snorts. “No fucking clue how much it costs for business model. Figured safer than sorry.”

Sid hadn’t realized he’d been living the past two months with a knot in the pit of his stomach until it slowly released at the self-deprecation in Malkin’s voice. “You know, she probably would’ve been happy with $500.”

“Ah,” Malkin mutters, “then can I have some back, please?”

That startles a laugh out of Sid, the honking-giggling kind that he usually tries to keep from doing around strangers. It’s just that Malkin sounds so fucking _dejected _at having given a teenage girl way more money than she would’ve ever asked for. Malkin is chuckling along and they keep setting each other off until Taylor comes running down the stairs. “Who are you talking to?”

“Evgeni Malkin,” Sid says and hears the soft sound of surprise Malkin makes at his pronunciation. As if Sid hadn’t spent that last halcyon summer before he’d left the Océanic mid-playoff run watching every game tape he could find of Malkin, daydreaming about playing on the same line.

“Oh,” Taylor says, carefully. Malkin has been something of a touchy subject for them these last few weeks. She’s staring at Sid like she’s trying to figure something out and Sid stares right back, confused.

A woman faintly laughs and Malkin says something in Russian. All those old game broadcasts had given Sid a very rudimentary, mostly hockey-centric Russian vocabulary so it’s easy to understand that Malkin just told her that he was talking to his _teammate_ and Sid feels his face flame at the thought.

He clears his throat. “Are you in Russia right now?”

“Of course,” Malkin says, like it’s inevitable.

“Great,” Sid mutters. “We’re gonna need to cash that check just to pay our damn phone bill.”

*

A stranger pulls up to the farm a week later, bearing a small white box. Sidney is in the driveway fighting with the feed truck, which keeps spraying oil all over the engine and hood like it’s a Jackson Pollack painting. He clears his throat a few times over Sid’s rather inventive cursing when he takes a shot of oil straight to the face and sets the box down on the cleanest part of the engine block.

“Courtesy of Mr. Malkin,” he says and walks off before Sid can ask any questions.

The box contains two iPhones, the kind that put his old clamshell to shame. Sid turns one on and an image of Malkin holding the Stanley Cup appears as the lock screen. There’s one text already from a number that looks international that simply reads, _this is a pity phone )))_

Sid stares at the number, pulls up a webpage to google _current time in Moscow, _and then hits _call_. The phone rings until the voicemail picks up, so Sid hangs up and tries again.

The line picks up and there’s the unmistakable sound of someone groaning. “Sid? Sid, is one in the morning.”

“Serves you right,” Sid says and bangs his wrench on the alternator. Malkin curses quietly in Russian. “I could accept the money for Taylor, but brand-new phones? Has this kind even come out yet?”

“I put you on family plan,” Malkin’s voice is muffled, like he’s buried his face back into his pillows. “Won’t cost a dime.”

“Oh,” Sid says and stares at the oil on the hood like it’s a Rorschach test. “Why?”

“Maybe I wanna talk to you,” Malkin says easily.

Sid waits a moment for more clarification, and when none is forthcoming, repeats, “But_ why_?” Living on a farm is like living the exact same day every day, with only the seasons to dictate that month’s work. Most of what Sid has to say nowadays involves the farm in some way and what doesn’t – well, he’s just not that interesting.

Malkin sighs the sigh of the deeply weary, as if Sid is deliberately making his life harder. “Send picture of baby cow and call it even. Спокойной ночи.” And then he hangs up.

Sid stares down at the phone, brand new and gleaming in his grease-stained hand. He sets the world clock on the home screen to Moscow, slips the phone into his back pocket, and picks up his wrench again.

Whatever _that _was, it’s going to have to wait.

The farm always comes first.

*

Texting with Malkin is an adventure. The man texts at least ten times a day regardless of whether Sid’s answered his other messages, sending as many photos of important Moscow tourist sites as he does slightly blurry selfies. As the days go by, his English downright disintegrates until all Sid is left with is weird Russian-English hybrid sentences that he has to Google translate, and emojis.

_You text like a five year old, _Sid finally writes.

_u txt like dedushka, _Malkin replies, followed by the old man emoji.

“That’s fair,” Sid says out loud.

Taylor takes to the new phones like a duck to water, although she doesn’t appreciate Sid giving her the side-eye when she tries to explain the purpose of Snapchat to him. “Why in all hell would you need to take a video just so it can disappear?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes and says, “Sid, you’re _so old_.”

“Am I old?” Sid asks Malkin the next day. He’s just gotten done checking the animals and it’s another hour before he’s got to seed the far fields. The Farmer’s Almanac predicted a rainy summer and Sid figures he can get away with planting a few thousand bushels of alfalfa to help feed the cattle during winter.

“Yes,” Malkin says, the traitor, “very old.” There’s the distinctive sound of silverware scraping against cast iron.

“Are you eating out of the pan again?” One of the first pictures Malkin had sent him was a dinner he’d been proud of making, some kind of sautéed mess that Malkin had stuck a fork in and called it good. It had woken him up sometime around midnight, but Sid had still immediately called Malkin just to let him know how ardently Sid’s mama would’ve beat his ass for using metal near cast iron pans.

Malkin pauses. “No?”

“Liar,” Sid laughs, and it comes out a tad too breathy for his tastes. He coughs, ready to ask how the day is going when a woman’s voice, still husky from sleep, drifts over the line. “Oh, I didn’t know you had company.”

“Да,” Malkin mumbles around a mouthful of his lunch.

“I’ll just…let you go then.” For some reason, Sid stumbles over his words. “I’m sorry,” he finally mutters and hangs up on Malkin’s confused grunt.

Sid places the phone on the passenger seat and stares out the windshield at the early morning fog. He needs to drive back to the house, get breakfast started and make sure Taylor gets up. He has a lot of work to do today, but maybe if he just sits here for a few more minutes this sinking feeling in his chest will go away.


End file.
